On Apr 23, 4:21 pm, "Billzz"
starband.net> wrote:> "Jack Linthicum"
earthlink.net> wrote in message
>
> news:240530f1-1f88-4b95-9757-02f46e87cf82@2g2000hsn.googlegroups.com...
>
>
>>> On Apr 23, 2:50 pm, "Billzz"
starband.net> wrote:>>> "Glenn Dowdy"
hp.spam.com> wrote in message>
>
>>>> "Billzz"
starband.net> wrote in message
>>>>news:2d020$480f7721$9440b19b$2342@STARBAND.NET...>
>>>>> Just happened to notice this and add that any soldier accepted for OCS
>>>>> goes through basic training, advanced training, then is temporarily
>>>>> promoted to Specialist 5th Class (E-5) while in OCS. That should be
>>>>> less
>>>>> than a year's service.
>
>>>> This seems not to match up with current Army processes.
>
>
>>>> No AIT and there is no longer a Spc 5 enlisted rank.
>
>>>> Glenn D.
>
>>> Oops. I got old. I forgot that they consolidated all OCS to Fort
>>> Benning.
>>> But I thought they were talking about the Vietnam era, when they had
>>> individual branch OCS. Anyway, this current OCS seems to say that one
>>> has
>>> to be a college graduate, which kind of defeats the purpose of "coming up
>>> from the ranks." This is just a direct commision program with a
>>> twelve-week
>>> orientation course, not the kind of OCS of the movie "Officer and
>>> Gentleman." Maybe there is no more OCS.
>
>> Officer and a Gentleman was a fantasy on the Navy AOCS. Hollywood
>> doesn't like straight training and people with ambition being passed
>> on to the next level for evaluation. John Travolta and John Denver
>> turned down the lead, Denver is said to have called it a "1950's
>> movie".
>
> I'm sure that the movie was fantasized but it had the element of the
> enlisted man going to OCS (I couldn't think of an army version.) Whoever
> wrote did capture some of the elements. The candidate who voluntarily
> "washed out" so he could get the girl but she turned him down because she
> wanted to marry an officer and travel the globe is something that the author
> must have seen.
We had (IIRC) three guys who had been "sent" to OCS by their military
fathers, I remember two bilged out, despite having the bilged out and
ex-stockade barracks right across the street from ours. I was in
during the soft years (1959) where the class ahead and behind ours had
a long list of DER and LST officer billets to fill and needed bodies.
The aviation people were almost always successful in getting that
training, but after OCS. The Navy moved OCS around for years, Orlando,
Pensacola and now back in Newport. There is no separate Aviation OCS
now nor was there one when I went through. Another probable piece of
fiction in O&G. Port Townsend, where the flick was shot, lives a large
role off the movie, or at least did when I was last there in the late
90s.
